Are you trying to tell me there isn't a difference between catching fish on a line and setting dogs on to a pig for 'sport'.

I don't see a difference in the degree to which each constitutes a sport. There is no sport in predatory relationships. It is a meaningless argument. And besides, you are the one calling for the ban. You are the one that has to make a case that it isn't sporting, and that something should be banned because it isn't sporting, if you want to use that line of argument. I suggest you just concede now that it was yet another red herring.

Even the RSPCA which opposes the hunting of animals for sport makes an exception for angling.

Do they also make an exception for animals that are eaten? Hunting for sport often implies for sport alone.

Your giving the anti-fishing hippies a great oportunity to ban angling with your devotion to the promotion of marine parks!

No I'm not. I'm making it harder for them to employ your trick - make up a rational sounding argument for a ban because their irrational one won't stick. If we give them a chance (and even if we don't - I have seen it already) they will make the exact same argument as you have - fishermen can't be trusted to manage the resource, fish feel pain so fishing should be banned because it is unsustainable and it isn't sport either because the fish never seem to eat us and we should also ban it because of all the trees we chopped down and the pollution.

So what about factory farming pigs? Have you not thought about that yet either? Have you not even heard of the issue before? I suggest you think a bit more about the pig situation before you start telling everyone that less intelligent animals should not be harvested because they are so smart, or because they might be so smart.

You have also gone quiet on the issue of scale. You haven't yet explained why scale is a relevant issue or why you can argue both that large and small scales of industry justify a ban.

You also haven't come up with an abjective way to draw the line. You started by insisting it was only whales and dolphins (including great apes). Now you include pig hunting and admit you haven't really thought about how far this could go. Where exactly do you draw the line? Or do you want to wait until you have banned a long list of activities before you think about that?

I don't see a difference in the degree to which each constitutes a sport. There is no sport in predatory relationships. It is a meaningless argument. And besides, you are the one calling for the ban. You are the one that has to make a case that it isn't sporting, and that something should be banned because it isn't sporting, if you want to use that line of argument. I suggest you just concede now that it was yet another red herring.

I haven't called for a ban - refer to my last post. If its a red herring you introduced it. You nagged for my opinion on the use of dogs so I gave it. As I sport it might be called to account given that we already ban entertainments like dog fighting and cock fighting. Once again is dishonest and desperate of you to suggest this means I am calling for a ban on pig hunting.

Talking about concessions it appears you have deleted a post you put up last night!

Your giving the anti-fishing hippies a great oportunity to ban angling with your devotion to the promotion of marine parks! 

No I'm not. I'm making it harder for them to employ your trick - make up a rational sounding argument for a ban because their irrational one won't stick. If we give them a chance (and even if we don't - I have seen it already) they will make the exact same argument as you have - fishermen can't be trusted to manage the resource, fish feel pain so fishing should be banned because it is unsustainable and it isn't sport either because the fish never seem to eat us and we should also ban it because of all the trees we chopped down and the pollution.


I haven't heard any of the anti-fishing mafia in the form of the NPA, NCC and the Greens use the fish fell pain argument to ban fishing, either they don't believe it or are afraid of being a laughing stock. The unsustainable fishing argument doesn't stack up in Australia's lightly fish waters - though you have tried to give it a run. With marine parks they have the perfect mechanism to ban fishing and they are campaigning hard for ever more of them.  A honey pot of government and NGO funds creates  tremedous incentive for the parks to keep expanding, aided by bureaucratic empire building, politically motivated scientists and preference wheeling and dealing. They can further deter angling with massive fines and criminal convictions if you get caught fishing in the wrong place. All the time they can claim this is for our own good as marine parks are the 'perfect fisheries management tool', ie as aided by you. Like you they appeal the the authority of the consensus statement.

Below is a list of the ‘hollow’ arguments pj has presented for why we should ban the harvest of Minke whales and why he is confident the ban won’t be extended to lots of other animals. Most of them are red herrings (ie irrelevant points). Some additional fallacies are listed afterwards. Most of the arguments centre around cruelty and animal intelligence. Hopefully I have included all of pj’s arguments. I think I would have noticed if he made a valid argument somewhere.

PJ tends to make an argument, ignore my response when I point out it’s flaws, then make it again a few posts later, worded slightly differently. Now rather than repeating myself I can just give a number so he can figure out why he is wrong.

1) Whaling is not central to Japanese culture.

2) The Japanese would not starve if they stopped whaling.

3) Whaling is a smaller industry than beef, pigs, fishing etc.

4) You can’t group whaling together with other harvests to form a really big group (eg fishing) that sounds to difficult to get rid of.

5) The whaling industry is smaller than it used to be.

6) The industry is (or was) bigger than it was prior to WWII.

7) Whaling is done for different reasons than it was historically (oil).

8) Whales were not bred for harvest.

9) Whales were overharvested in the past (ie ‘they’ can’t be trusted).

10) Killer whales appear to be smarter than pigs.

11) We can’t be certain that Minke whales are not smarter than pigs.

12) Killing a whale is no different to killing a human.

13) Killing a whale takes a while.

14) Lots of people think whaling is wrong.

15) The IWC has banned whaling.

16) Whaling is conducted via a loophole in the IWC laws.

17) The Japanese subsidise whaling

18) Whale watching is valuable

19) The Japanese are putting diplomatic pressure on small nations to lift the ban.

20) The Japanese are being recalcitrant in not bowing to international pressure.

21) Politeness in the face atrocity is a form of complicity.

22) Evolution is not a scientific theory.

23) Freediver has no credibility.

24) Marine parks.

25) There is no evidence a cruelty based ban on whaling would lead to a similar ban on other harvests.

1, 2: Cultural imperialism. The Japan do not have to justify whaling to us. We have to justify imposing our recently acquired cultural taboos on them. To some extent all the claims above involve cultural imperialism, in that they assume the Japanese must justify freedom from our cultural taboos.

1,2,3,4,5,7: Focus on the ability to ban whaling, not whether we should ban whaling.

3,4,5,6: The magnitude of the industry is irrelevant to the animal cruelty argument.

8: Breeding an animal for harvest does not justify killing it any more than killing a wild animal. Sustainable wild harvests have far less impact on the environment than commercial agriculture, so this argument actually works in favour of whaling..

9: many other species have been overharvested in the past but have now recovered and are managed sustainably.

10,11: Measurements of animal intelligence are not objective. They are entirely subjective and anthropocentric. That is, they centre around an animal’s tendency to mimic proxies for human intelligence or it’s ability to perform circus tricks on cue.

13: It doesn’t take as long as it takes many fish, turtles etc to die on longlines. Recreational fishermen can take longer to land large fish.

14,15,16: Argumentum ad populum and appeal to an irrelevant authority. Just because something is banned does not mean it should be banned. If the IWC ban has no more authority on whether the ban is right than the loophole that allows whaling to continue. The original IWC ban was based on sustainability, but is now being held onto for cultural reasons (ie, our recently acquired taboo on killing them).

17, 18: the economic issues are not a justification for banning whaling. They are only a justification for correcting the economic problems. Whaling and whale watching are not mutually exclusive, any more than scuba diving and fishing are mutually exclusive. We don’t have to ban fishing so people can go scuba diving, just as we don’t have to ban farming because it is subsidised.

19: Australia does the same.

19,20,21: Circular arguments. They assume the ban is justified in the first place then interpret actions on that assumption to reinforce the need for the ban.

22,23,24: Argumentum ad hominem

25: Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Plus, the fact that there is arguably already a cruelty based ban on whaling is evidence that there will be attempts to ban other harvests, if the whaling ban issue is fully resolved. Many powerful organisations such as PETA are already calling for a complete ban on recreational fishing on animal cruelty grounds. They are pouring lots of funds into a long term strategy of 'indoctrinating' children to see fishing as equivalent to torturing your pet dog. Many non-food based hunts, such as fox hunting in the UK, have also been banned recently. The whole point of the argument against banning whaling on cruelty grounds is that it would be the first case of banning a harvest for food. It would set a precedent. You do not need direct evidence to expect a precedent to set a precedent.

Why is it good enough for you to mention marine parks in relation to this topic but not me?

I did not use it to attack your credibility. You did so to me. Even if you were right about marine parks, that would reinforce my argument about whaling, not undermine it.

Further to your argument that the whaling ban will open the floodgates to ban other forms of hunting there is no evidence of this.

The argument is based on common sense. Your alleged evidence about marine parks also applies to whaling. What is more likely to be hijacked - bans based on animal cruelty or bans based on fisheries management?

Here's another logical fallacy for you - confusing absence of evidence with evidence of absence. I think I'll add that to the list.

Firstly there is no mechanism like the IWC for other countries to interfere with our practices.

Who says it has to be a form of cultural imperialism? It is more likely to come from within our own society. And the fact that the legal mechanism are not in place is irrelevant. The legal mechanism are in place for sustainability reasons. They have already been hijacked. Oh yeah, there's your evidence for you. A ban based on sustainability has already been hijacked. Obviously you pick the low hanging fruit first.

Secondly we and other countries which have banned our own whaling efforts have not seen this leading to other hunting bans.

Didn't you bring up the example of fox hunting in the UK? What do you think the Australian animal libbers would do if they ever achieved a meaningful ban on whaling? Call it a day?

With the pig hunting using dogs example if any ban were to eventuate it would more likely be due to the similarity of the practice to dog fights and thingy fights where bans exists under animal cruelty laws.

No it isn't. Whaling is hunting for food. Pigging is hunting for food. Do you see the connection yet? What is it that is stopping animal cruelty laws being applied to food harvest? It's the fact that animal cruelty laws have not been used to ban a food harvest. Even if the laws were a modified version of current laws, this does not undermine the argument that banning one food harvest on cruelty grounds would lead to others being banned.

Using FD's logic we should scrap all our animal cruelty laws as they will inevitable be taken too far by animal rights activists.

How many times have I responded to this argument? How many times have you ignored the response, then made the same silly argument again? I can't even think of how to work this into my list as it is so far removed from the issue of whether to ban whaling.

PJ, I'm not sure if you've realised yet, but by saying whaling is cruel and should be banned, you are one of the animal libbers. To be honest, you really should say 'we' or 'my comrades' rather than they.

It doesn't reinforce it - it just shows you are proposing a hypothetical threat to angling (and other activities), while ignoring one that is actually occuring.

That makes no sense at all. If marine parks are a threat to other activities, why isn't a whaling ban? the whaling ban is actually happening is it not? It is doing a far better job of banning whaling than marine parks are at banning fishing. You have no valid reason for calling marien aprks a real threat and the whaling ban a hypothetical threat.

]You are arguing that animal libbers will try to take advantage of a fisheries management but won't get any mileage from actually succeeding in banning a harvest on animal cruelty grounds. You are arguing that successfully hijacking a ban for sustainability will have less impact than the use of another fisheries management tool that doesn't involve a harest ban on any species. That is just absurd.

There is no sign of the NCC, NPA or the Greens using the cruelty argument against fishing, let alone whaling bans a precedent or a mecanism.

That's because the whaling ban is still a touch and go thing. What do you think would happen if some group made a serious effort and tried to use a whaliong ban to ban fishing. I'll tell you what would happen. people like you would wake up to themselves and the whaling ban would disappear overnight. It has to become part of global culture before they will risk losing it.

If only one is actually happening then the answer is obvious.

The whaling ban is actually happening. Hijacking marine parks to ban fishing is not. Here's the proof - plenty of fishermen still support marine parks. How many whalers do you think support your argument that whaling is cruel and should be banned completely. Fopr your argument to make sense would require a grand conspiracy whereby the majority of fishermen do not realise that fishing is being banned.

I'm glad you admit marine parks have been hijacked.

I didn't say that.

How did the legal mechanism get up for fisheries?

I was talking about whaling. There is no legal mechanism for banning fishing on cruelty grounds.

Marine parks are just being justified on sustainability. We are even told they are not there to manage fisheries but to "preserve biodiversity".

Because 'you' are idiots. The biodiversity is being preserved by managing fishing.

Also why didn't they try to get cruelty legistlation up instead?

They did. They still are. It has begun already. Animal libbers just like yourself have already moved onto fishing. See the last bit in the list post.

The animal libbers are against any exploitation of animals - its there reason for being. No, they are not going top stop with one ban and they are not going to stop with no bans or a hundred bans.

I don't care if they try unsuccesfully forever to get such a ban over the line. I do care if people like you create a precedent for them.

A nation's animal cruelty laws can apply to sports, domesticated farm animals and hunting for food.

Laws can apply to anything you want them to. The point is, with the exception of the whaling precedent, they have never been used to ban the harvest for food of an entrie species. Do you understand the precedent you are trying to set?

Eg the fox hunt ban in the UK and the use of dogs on pigs.

Not a harvest, Not a ban.

It's not as silly as your whale harvest argument.

Then why do you just keep repeating it and ignore my responses?

This is the argument so far on this point, and trust me it is this rediculous:

PJ: Using FD's logic we should get rid of animal cruelty laws in case they are used.

FD: But they have never been used to ban a harvest for food.

PJ: Using FD's logic we should get rid of animal cruelty laws in case they are used.

FD: But they have never been used to ban a harvest for food.

PJ: Using FD's logic we should get rid of animal cruelty laws in case they are used.

FD: But they have never been used to ban a harvest for food.

PJ: Using FD's logic we should get rid of animal cruelty laws in case they are used.

FD: But they have never been used to ban a harvest for food.

PJ: Using FD's logic we should get rid of animal cruelty laws in case they are used.

FD: But they have never been used to ban a harvest for food.

PJ: Using FD's logic we should get rid of animal cruelty laws in case they are used.

FD: But they have never been used to ban a harvest for food.

PJ: Using FD's logic we should get rid of animal cruelty laws in case they are used.

FD: But they have never been used to ban a harvest for food.

PJ: Using FD's logic we should get rid of animal cruelty laws in case they are used.

FD: But they have never been used to ban a harvest for food.

Repeat ad infinitum.

Do you even realise that your whaling argument is the precedent they need to apply animal welfare laws to food harvest? Do you understand how this point undermines your argument, rather than supporting it? We do not need to get rid of current animal cruelty laws, because even I support them. We do need to oppose the precedent of banning a harvest completely on animal cruelty grounds.

Bored, bored, bored...

So there is such a thing as legitimate animal welfare - then why does my concern for the welfare of whales make me a rabid animal libber?

Because it is hypocritical. Because it is cultural imperialism. Because you are trying to set a precedent of banning a food on animal welfare grounds.

You ignore all the sublties and supporting arguments such as:

Well I'm glad I made that list. I didn't think you'd start again from the beggining like that. I thought you had wisened up and moved on. See 1, 25, 17, 13, 9, 10, 11 above - that's in the order you presented them. Have you considered responding to my criticisms of each argument, rather than repeating them?

When these reasons are viewed as a whole the case is strong.

No it isn't. It's just tedious because people like you bring up one issue then move on to countless others as the flaw in each one is pointed out. Like I said, you have not raised a single valid reason for the whaling ban. Even 100 invalid reasons will not substitute for a single valid one.

You have been trying to pick away at each justification in isolation.

Duh. That's how ratioanl debate works pj. It's not about waving your arms in the air and hoping no-one will count up all the little flaws in your argument. You can't say 'well this argument is irrational, but if I lump it with 20 other irrational arguments and say them really quickly then maybe it's OK.'

Consider the Blue Groper. It is illegal to take them by hand spear in NSW, but you can take them on a line. These large colourful fish are everywhere and they are not afraid of people. Consequently, it is also 'wrong' to spear them. Even spearfishermen in NSW react badly to the suggestion that the rules should be changed once there are plenty of marine parks established. The fish are territorial and would recieve more than enough protection in marine parks. There would be plenty to keep the scuba divers happy. Yet if you pick any other fish and arbitrarily declared it off limits to one group of fishermen, they would be up in arms.

Sustainable wild harvests have far less ecological impact than intensive farming. They do not require modification of the landscape or the artifical recreation of entire food chains (eg, chopping down trees to grow grain to feed cattle, or trawling up fish to feed penned tuna). They are not reliant on chemically reinforced monoculture. The animals are free range and comparably chemical and hormone free. We should take advantage of every viable opportunity to harvest wild food sustainably rather than relying on commercial agriculture. We should not arbitrarily ban the consumption of certain animals for cultural or emotional reasons.